Lady Oracle

by Margaret Atwood

  It was true I had two lives, but on off days I felt that neither of them was completely real. With Arthur I was merely playing house, I wasn't really working at it. And my Costume Gothics were only paper; paper castles, paper costumes, paper dolls, as inert and lifeless finally as those unsatisfactory blank-eyed dolls I'd dressed and undressed in my mother's house. I got a reputation for being absentminded, which Arthur's friends found endearing. Soon it was expected of me, and I added it to my repertoire of deficiencies.

  "You apologize too much," one of the strident wives told me, and I began to wonder about that. It was true, I did apologize. But why did I feel I had to be excused? Why did I want to be exempted, and what from? In high school you didn't have to play baseball if you had your period or a pain in your stomach, and I preferred the sidelines. Now I wanted to be acknowledged, but I feared it. If I brought the separate parts of my life together (like uranium, like plutonium, harmless to the naked eye, but charged with lethal energies) surely there would be an explosion. Instead I floated, marking time.

  It was September. Arthur was in one of his slumps, having just written a batch of letters denouncing everyone connected with the Curriculum Reform movement, which had been his latest cause. I'd just started a new book; Love, My Ransom was the working title. With Arthur hanging around the apartment it was hard to close my eyes and drift off into the world of shadows; also, the old sequence of chase and flight, from rape or murder, no longer held my attention as it once had. I needed something new, some new twist: there was now more competition, Costume Gothics were no longer regarded as mere trash but as money-making trash, and I felt I was in danger of being crowded out. From scanning the works of my rivals, as I did every week, anxiously, in the corner drugstore, I could see that the occult was the latest thing. It was no longer enough to have a hero with a cloak; he had to have magical powers as well. I went to the Central Reference Library and read up on the seventeenth century. What I needed was a ritual, a ceremony, something sinister but decorative....

  When Penelope awoke, she found she was blindfolded; she could move neither hand nor foot. They had tied her to a chair. The two of them were whispering together at the opposite end of the room; she strained to catch their words, knowing that her life and that of Sir Percy might depend upon it.

  "We can use her to gain access to the knowledge, I tell you," Estelle was saying. She was a tempestuous beauty with gypsy blood.

  "It would be better to put her out of the way," muttered Francois. "She has seen too much."

  "Yes, yes," said Estelle, "but first we can use her. It is not often that one with such great but undeveloped powers comes into my hands."

  "Have your way," Francois said, between his teeth, "so long as you will then allow me to have mine." His flashing eyes swept over Penelope's trembling and helpless young body. "Hush ... she is awake."

  Estelle approached, moving with savage, untamed grace. Her small white teeth flashed in the semidarkness, and she threw back her long, disheveled red hair. "So, my child," she said with false friendliness. "You are awake. Now you will perform a small service for us, hein?"

  "I will do nothing for you," Penelope said. "I know you for what you are." Estelle laughed. "Such courage, little one," she said. "But you will not be able to help yourself. Drink this." She forced some liquid from an exotic flask between Penelope's teeth. Then she removed Penelope's blindfold and placed a small table with a mirror on it before her, lit a candle, and set the candle in front of the mirror.

  Penelope felt an aura of evil gather in the room; it grew thick around her Despite herself she felt her gaze being drawn to the flame; her mind fluttered, fascinated, helpless as a moth, her own reflection disappeared ... further into the mirror she went, and further, till she seemed to be walking on the other side of the glass, in a land of indistinct shadows. Ahead of her, voices murmured in the mist.

  "Do not be frightened," Estelle 's voice said from a great distance. "Tell us what you see. Tell us what you hear."

  I'd been typing with my eyes closed, as usual, but at this point I opened them. I'd come up against a blank wall: I hadn't the least idea what Penelope would see or hear next. I thought about it for half an hour, with no result. I'd have to act it through. This was a longstanding habit of mine: when I came to a dead end, I tried to simulate the scene as much as possible and block out the action, like a stage director.

  It was risky, since Arthur was watching television in the next room. Also, I didn't think we had any candles. I went out to the kitchen, rummaged through the drawers, and came up with a short, dust-covered stub which had once gone with the chafing dish I'd bought in a moment of delusion and thrown out in a moment of rage. I stuck it to a saucer, found the matches, and went back into the bedroom, closing the door. Arthur thought I was writing an essay on the sociology of pottery for the university extension course I claimed to be taking.

  I lit the candle end and set it in front of my dressing-table mirror. (I'd recently bought a three-sided one, like my mother's.) It was only when I was sitting in front of the mirror that I remembered my previous experiment with Automatic Writing, back in high school. That time I'd set fire to my bangs. I pinned my hair back from my face, just in case. I wasn't expecting to get any messages, only to set the scene for my book, but I felt I should have a pen or a pencil handy.

  Penelope, of course, was a natural medium. She was easily hypnotized. She had also just had some liquid from an exotic flask, which would help. I went out to the kitchen again, poured myself a Scotch and water, and drank it. Then I sat myself in front of the mirror and tried to concentrate. Maybe Penelope should get a message from Sir Percy, telling her that he was in danger. Maybe she should transmit one.... Was she a sender or a receiver? Bell Telephone would go out of business if this method could be perfected....

  My attention was wandering. You are Penelope, I told myself sternly.

  I stared at the candle in the mirror, the mirror candle. There was more than one candle, there were three, and I knew that if I moved the two sides of the mirror toward me there would be an infinite number of candles, extending in a line as far as I could see.... The room seemed very dark, darker than it had before; the candle was very bright, I was holding it in my hand and walking along a corridor, I was descending, I turned a corner. I was going to find someone. I needed to find someone.

  There was movement at the edge of the mirror. I gasped and turned around. Surely there had been a figure, standing behind me. But there was no one. I was wide awake now, I could hear a faint roar from the television in the next room, and the voice of the announcer, "He shoots, he scores! A blistering drive from the point. There may have been a rebound.... Here comes the replay...."

  I looked down at the piece of paper. There, in a scrawly handwriting that was certainly not my own, was a single word:

  Bow

  I blew out the candle and turned on the overhead light. Bow. What the hell was that supposed to mean? I got out the paperback Roget's Thesaurus I kept for synonyms of words I used often, such as "tremble" - v. flutter, throb (SHAKE); quiver, shiver, shudder (FEAR) - and looked it up.

  bow - n. curtsey, obeisance, salaam (RESPECT, GESTURE); prow, stem, nose (FRONT); longbow, crossbow (ARMS); curve, bend, arch (CURVE, BEND).

  bow - v. nod, salaam, curtsey (RESPECT, GESTURE); arch, round, incline (CURVE, BEND); cringe, stoop, kneel (SLAVERY); submit, yield, defer (SUBMISSION).

  What a dumb word, I thought; there was no way that was going to help out with Penelope and Estelle. But then I felt the impact of what had happened. I had actually written a word, without being conscious of doing it. Not only that, I'd seen someone in the mirror, or rather in the room, standing behind me. I was sure of it. Everything Leda Sprott had told me came back to me; it was real, I was convinced it was real and someone had a message for me. I wanted to go down that dark, shining corridor again, I wanted to see what was at the other end....

  On the other hand, I didn't want to. It was too frightening. It
was also too ridiculous: what was I doing playing around with candles and mirrors, like one of Leda Sprott's octogenarian Spiritualists? I needed a message for Penelope, true, but I didn't have to run the risk of setting myself on fire to get one.

  I went out to the kitchen and poured myself another drink.

  That was how it began. The mirror won, curiosity prevailed. I set Penelope aside, I left her sitting in her chair: I would attend to her later. The word hadn't been for her, it had been for me, and I wanted to find out what it meant. The next morning I went to the nearest Loblaws and bought six pairs of dinner candles, and that evening, when Arthur was watching a football game, I went again into the mirror.

  The experience was much the same as before, and it remained the same for the three months or so during which I continued with this experiment. There was the sense of going along a narrow passage that led downward, the certainty that if I could only turn the next corner or the next - for these journeys became longer - I would find the thing, the truth or word or person that was mine, that was waiting for me. Only one thing changed: the feeling that someone was standing behind me was not repeated. When I would emerge from the trance, as I suppose it could be called, there would usually be a word, sometimes several words, occasionally even a sentence, on the notepad in front of me, though twice there was nothing but a scribble. I would stare at these words, trying to make sense of them; I would look them up in Roget's Thesaurus, and most of the time, other words would fill in around them:

  Who is the one standing in the prow

  Who is the one voyaging

  under the sky's arch, under the earth's arch

  under the arch of arrows

  in the death boat, why does she sing

  She kneels, she is bent down

  under the power

  her tears are dark

  her tears are jagged

  her tears are the death you fear

  Under the water, under the water sky

  her tears fall, they are dark flowers

  I wasn't at all sure what this meant, nor could I ever get to the end of the corridor.

  However, the words I collected in this way became increasingly bizarre and even threatening: "iron," "throat," "knife," "heart." At first the sentences centered around the same figure, the same woman. After a while I could almost see her: she lived under the earth somewhere, or inside something, a cave or a huge building; sometimes she was on a boat. She was enormously powerful, almost like a goddess, but it was an unhappy power. This woman puzzled me. She wasn't like anyone I'd ever imagined, and certainly she had nothing to do with me. I wasn't at all like that, I was happy. Happy and inept.

  Then another person, a man, began to turn up. Something was happening between the two of them; cryptic love letters formed on the pages, obscure, frightening. This man was evil, I felt, but it was hard to tell. Sometimes he seemed good. He had many disguises. Occasionally there would be passages that looked as if they came from somewhere else, and some rather boring prosy sermons about the meaning of life.

  I kept all the words, and the longer sections I worked out from them, in a file folder marked Recipes. I'd sometimes hidden notes for Costume Gothics in the same file, though I stored the manuscripts themselves in my underwear drawer.

  Between these sessions, in the daytime, when I was doing the dishes or coasting along the aisles of the supermarket, I would have moments of sudden doubt about this activity. What was I doing, why was I doing it? If I was going to hypnotize myself like this, shouldn't it be for some good end, like giving up drinking? Was I going (perhaps) just a little crazy? What would Arthur think if he found out?

  I don't know what would have happened if I'd kept on, but I was forced to stop. I went into the mirror one evening and I couldn't get out again. I was going along the corridor, with the candle in my hand as usual, and the candle went out. I think the candle really did go out and that was why I was stuck there, in the midst of darkness, unable to move. I'd lost all sense of direction; I was afraid to turn around even, in case I ended up going farther in. I felt as though I was suffocating.

  I don't know how long it was; it felt like centuries, but then Arthur was shaking me. He sounded angry.

  "Joan, what're you doing?" he said. "What's the matter with you?"

  I was back in our bedroom. I was so thankful I threw my arms around Arthur and started to cry. "I've had the most terrible experience," I said to him.

  "What?" he said. "I found you in here with the lights out, staring into the mirror. What happened?"

  I couldn't tell him. "I saw someone outside the window," I said. "A man. He was looking in."

  Arthur rushed over to the window to look, and I quickly checked the piece of paper. There was nothing on it at all; not a mark, not a scratch. I vowed I would stop this stupidity right then and there. Leda Sprott had said you needed training, and now I was ready to believe it. The next day I threw out my remaining candles and went back to Penelope and Sir Percy Somerville. I wanted to forget all about this little adventure into the extranatural. I wasn't cut out for the occult, I told myself. I scrapped Penelope's mirror scene: she would have to make do with rape and murder like everyone else.

  But I was left with the collection of papers. Several weeks later, I got them out and looked through them. They seemed to me to be as good as a few similar books I'd seen in bookstores. I thought maybe one of the small experimental publishing houses might be interested in them, so I typed them up and sent them off to Black Widow Press. I got back what I thought was a rather rude letter, almost by the next post:

  Dear Ms. Foster:

  Quite frankly, these reminded us of a cross between Kahlil Gibran and Rod McKuen. Though some of the pieces are not without literary merit, unfortunately the whole collection is uneven in tone and unresolved. Perhaps you should begin with submissions to the literary magazines. Or you might try Morton and Sturgess; it might be their kind of thing.

  This depressed me for a while. Maybe they were right, maybe it wasn't any good. I didn't suppose it would help if I said the manuscript had been dictated by powers beyond my control. Why did I want to publish it anyway? Who did I think I was? "Who do you think you are?" my mother used to ask me, but she would never wait for an answer.

  But I had as much right to try as the next person. I screwed up my nerve and bundled the pages off to Morton and Sturgess. I wasn't at all prepared for what happened.

  The decisive meeting took place in the bar at the Inn on the Park. I'd never been in this place before: it wasn't the sort of place Arthur would ever go. It was too expensive, for one thing, and it was obviously for capitalists. Despite myself, I was impressed.

  There were three of them at the meeting: John Morton, the original owner of the company, who was distinguished-looking; Doug Sturgess, his partner and the one in charge of promotion, who struck me as an American; and a haggard-eyed young man, introduced to me as an editor, Colin Harper. "A poet himself," said Sturgess heartily.

  They all ordered martinis. I wanted a double Scotch, but I didn't want to be thought unladylike, not right away. They would find out soon enough, I felt. So I ordered a grasshopper.

  "Well," said John Morton, looking at me benevolently, with the tips of his fingers pressed together.

  "Yes, indeed," said Sturgess. "Well, Colin, you might as well begin."

  "We thought it was - ah - reminiscent - of a mixture of Kahlil Gibran and Rod McKuen," said Colin Harper unhappily.

  "Oh," I said. "It's that bad, is it?"

  "Bad?" said Sturgess. "Is she saying bad? You know how many copies those guys sell? It's like having the Bible, man." He was wearing a suit with a safari jacket top.

  "You mean you want to do it?" I said.

  "It's dynamite," said Sturgess. "And isn't she a great little lady? We'll have a great cover. Four-color, the works. Do you play the guitar?"

  "No," I said, surprised. "Why?"

  "I thought we might do you as a sort of female Leonard Cohen," said Sturgess. />
  The other two were slightly embarrassed by this. "Of course, it will need a little editing," said Morton.

  "Yes," said Colin. "We might take out the more, well...."

  "A bit of it could come out, here and there," said Sturgess. "I mean, there's some of it I don't understand too much: for instance, who's the man with the daffodils and the icicle teeth?"

  "I sort of like that," Colin said. "It's, you know, Jungian...."

  "But the part about the Road of Life, well...."

  "I like that," Sturgess said. "That's clear, that's something you can get your teeth into."

  "Well, gentlemen, those are details," said Morton. "We can clear all that up later. It's evident that this is a book that has something for everyone. My dear," he said, turning to me, "we would be most happy to publish your book. Now, do you have a title for it?"

  "Not yet," I said. "I haven't thought much about it. I guess I didn't really think it would ever get published. I don't know much about these things."

  "What about this bit, right here," Sturgess said, thumbing through the manuscript. "This sort of caught my eye. Section Five:

  She sits on the iron throne

  She is one and three

  The dark lady the redgold lady

  the blank lady oracle

  of blood, she who must be

  obeyed forever

  Her glass wings are gone

  She floats down the river

  singing her last song

  and so forth."

  "Yes," said Morton, "that's resonant. That reminds me of something."

  "What I mean is, here's your title," said Sturgess. "Lady Oracle. That's it, I have a nose for them. The women's movement, the occult, all of that."

  "I don't want to publish this book if it isn't really any good," I said. I was on my third grasshopper, and I was beginning to feel undignified. I was also beginning to wonder about Arthur. What was he going to think about it, this unhappy but torrid and, I was feeling now, slightly preposterous love affair between a woman in a boat and a man in a cloak, with icicle teeth and eyes of fire?